Tap o’Noth

Kids adventure SOTA

sota
Author

Alex Johnstone

Published

February 9, 2025

Fraser, MM0EFI, and Tim, G5OLD, were going out to Conachcraig today and asked who else was going out. I was keen to go (as always) but lots of family activities were going to limit me. So what better way to solve it, than to bring the kids with me!

Up to the top

Up to the top

It was a bit cold, around 0-1 °C when we set off. Everyone was excited to go at home, but when we got there everyone was complaining! We made reasonable time to the top, and I setup the tent for the kids so they could keep out of the wind and have their snack in comfort. I setup on 2m by the edge of the fort remains to try and keep out of the wind.

Tent and station

Tent and station

Fraser and Tim just came on 2m as I was setup and so had two summit to summits with them. Sounded a lot snowier and colder with them. Then had a succession of chasers on 2m. I did hear someone on a HEMA summit work Fraser but I never worked them. My HT was on dual channel monitoring and I kept hearing someone talking on 145.150 but I couldn’t remember how to turn that off or change the secondary channel, so that was distracting. I was going to setup on HF but it was a bit cold and the kids probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Also seems the base of the tent isn’t waterproof anymore and several were complaining of wet areas.

Selfie on the trig

Selfie on the trig

I packed up and we had some photos, then set off back to the car park. No convincing people to walk this time, everyone was running down the hill and I was the last one!

Descent. Ben Rinnes in the distance.

Descent. Ben Rinnes in the distance.

Back home for lunch and then a Sunday afternoon at home.

If you have any comments or questions, please send me an email.